K. Neill Foster, PhD

The excerpt below is an interesting example of how conservatism has cemented the doctrine of the Alliance Church. Any attempt to make modern day Alliance Church theology consider the moral possibility of women clergy, or gay clergy, is considered by Foster, to be “casuistry,” “scripture-twisting” and an “agenda hermeneutics.”

And it’s no wonder, since gay behaviour is a sin in the eyes of the Alliance Church.

“Today’s hermeneutical adventurers have not exactly returned to the allegorical method, which tossed out premillennialism, but have established new ways, modern ways to circumvent the plain statements of Scripture. A sometimes appropriate cultural hermeneutic, for example, can be a Corban-like way to get around Scriptures one may not like (Mark 7:11). Casuistry it is called. Evangelicals are tempted in the twenty-first century by agenda hermeneutics from the twentieth century.

· Homosexuals who wish to be Christian ministers must first invent a permissive hermeneutic for the Bible before they can convince themselves or others of their legitimacy.

· Egalitarian/feminist views of the Bible require Scripture-twisting which even Clark Pinnock, no biblicist himself these days, called “hermeneutical ventriloquism.”

· Those who wish to advance universalism (or its little sister, inclusivism) must have an agenda hermeneutic to negate John 14:6 in which Jesus claims that He is the way, the truth and life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him.”